From all accounts, it wasn’t quite cricket when Ravindra Jadeja and James Anderson were walking back to the team rooms at lunch on the second day – July 10 – of the Trent Bridge Test match.
The scoreboard read 342 for 5. Jadeja was unbeaten on 24, with MS Dhoni on 81. Anderson had taken three of the Indian wickets to fall at that stage. The pitch wasn’t to England’s liking – it was a non-pitch, to be fair. The conditions were such that the only way to avoid a draw was for one of the teams to voluntarily lose.
What happened immediately after the fracas is crucial.
On July 16, Anderson was charged under Level 3 of the ICC’s Code of Conduct for allegedly abusing and pushing Jadeja. Sunil Dev, the Indian team manager, had raised the stink, not the on-field umpires. Level 3 breaches are not dealt with by the match referee – David Boon in this case – but by a judicial commissioner. Gordon Lewis was appointed. August 1 was the date for Anderson’s hearing.
Now, August 1 is past, and Lewis has pronounced both Anderson and Jadeja not guilty. Which begs a look at the facts from that July 10 afternoon.
Something did happen, of that there is no doubt. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s initially reacted with: “The ECB has today reacted with surprise […] for a minor incident involving Ravindra Jadeja …” And, almost in reaction to Dev’s charge, the ECB decided to “… lodge code of conduct breaches against Jadeja”.
We are still on July 16 here. Phil Neale, England’s manager, charged: “… after the players left the public area and entered the pavilion, Jadeja turned suddenly and took steps towards Anderson in an aggressive and threatening manner.”
Cut to July 25, and Jadeja was fined 50% of his match fee by Boon. Incredibly, he was not fined for doing what Neale had said – a Level 2 offence – but for actions “contrary to the spirit of the game” – a Level 1 offence.
Boon’s statement at the time laid further credence to the fact that some argy-bargy had taken place: “While I was in no doubt that confrontation did occur, and that such conduct was not in the spirit of the game and should not have taken place, I was not comfortably satisfied that this was a level 2 offence.”
The Board of Control for Cricket in India didn’t like the verdict. Nor did Dhoni. They chose to appeal; the hearing was slotted for the same day as Anderson’s. On August 1. And that day, evening Indian time, Lewis pronounced both Anderson and Jadeja not guilty. Problem solved.
Or not.
There was an incident and the people who played the lead roles in that incident – Anderson and Jadeja – have been pronounced innocent.
They can be innocent only if nothing actually happened. But according to Neale and Dev and even Boon, who must have formed his opinion after listening to everyone, something did happen. Not just them, according to sections of the British media, Matt Prior and Ben Stokes also saw what happened and had, reportedly, testified against Jadeja. And Dhoni, apart from sticking up for his mate, scattered enough hints at his press interactions on July 16 and on July 26 that “an individual”, presumably Anderson, “pushed” Jadeja and “he barely regained his balance”.
Later reports also confirmed that during the hearing, Anderson confessed to pushing and abusing Jadeja but insisted that the physical contact was in self-defence as Jadeja had moved aggressively towards him.
Now I can understand that the ECB backed Anderson and his mates stood up for him. Ditto Jadeja and his supporters. But Lewis’s verdict, effectively, calls them all liars. So the ECB and the BCCI – two of the Big Three cricket boards – were lying to give their teams a bit of an advantage. Prior, 78 Tests old at that time, was lying. And one national captain – Dhoni – was lying. And the match referee, Boon, was gullible enough to be misled into believing something that hadn’t happened had, indeed, happened.
Somewhere in that big pile of slush, is the truth. Perhaps we know, or can add up, the facts.
“There have been individuals from our side too in the past that have crossed the line. You can be aggressive, you can be vocal, but there are certain guidelines that are laid out and we should follow that,” Dhoni had said on July 16. So lines were crossed.
The question is: Why did Mr Lewis give the ‘not guilty’ verdict?
This is where we move from facts to speculation: Was there pressure from the boards – two of the Big Three, remember – to end the matter where it was?
‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth’ – does anything else remain? Except the possibility that on July 10 afternoon, Jadeja and Anderson barely looked in the other’s direction on their way out of the field. Sure!
One can only hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end of the ICC Code of Conduct.
